Happy Halloween

Montana Heritage Commission photo

George Ives swung from the gallows on this spot in Nevada City on December 21, 1863. This remarkable photograph, taken by Heritage Commission staff on the 143rd anniversary of his hanging, captured the strange image of an unidentified man. It is not George Ives; he was not bald. But perhaps it is the image of Charlie Bovey, who recreated the town of Nevada City, placing endangered buildings from all over Montana  along the streets. Charlie died in 1978 in Cabin #5, behind the Nevada City Hotel.

Here is a close-up of the man's face:

Spooky, right? I hope your Halloween is as wonderfully spooky as this photo.

Thomas Dimsdale’s School

Health was among the many reasons that people came west to the booming gold camps. They believed that the high mountain climate could cure tuberculosis, but they did not realize that primitive living conditions and brutal winters could neutralize healthful benefits. Thomas Dimsdale was one of those pioneers afflicted with tuberculosis who came west for the mountain climate. He opened a private school in the winter of 1863-1864. Students paid two dollars a week to attend classes in this tiny cabin, which stood on Cover Street in Virginia City.

Thomas Dimsdale. Courtesy Yanoun.org

Later, as editor of the territory’s first newspaper, the Montana Post, Dimsdale wrote an account of the vigilantes in installments for the newspaper. It became Montana’s first published book, The Vigilantes of Montana, and is still in print. Mary Ronan was a student of Dimsdale's, and she later recalled in Girl from the Gulches, “Professor Dimsdale was an Englishman, small, delicate looking, and gentle. I liked him. It seemed to me that he knew everything. In his school all was harmonious and pleasant. While his few pupils buzzed and whispered over their assignments, the professor sat at a makeshift desk writing, writing, always writing. When, during 1864, The Vigilantes of Montana was being published at the Montana Post, I thought it must have been the composition of those articles that had so engrossed him. We children took advantage of Professor Dimsdale’s preoccupation and would frequently ask to be excused. We would run down the slope into a corral at the bottom of Daylight Gulch. We would spend a few thrillful moments sliding down the straw stacks.” Dimsdale was appointed the first territorial superintendent of schools in 1866, but he died soon after from the tuberculosis that brought him west. The tiny cabin, in ruins in a Virginia City back yard, was moved out of harm’s way to Nevada City in 1976.

The Dimsdale School in its present location in Nevada City

Sullivan Saddlery

Nevada City, once a booming gold camp, is now a recreated western town with buildings from across the state. One of its best treasures was rescued from demolition in 1940. Fort Benton was itching to demolish what they considered a public eyesore. The late Joseph Sullivan had crafted saddles in this shop for nearly forty years. Sullivan had died, and Charles Bovey of Great Falls chanced to meet the saddle maker’s daughter who gave him the building along with all its contents.

Inside the Sullivan Saddle Shop. Photo by Daniel Hagerman

The historic saddler was one of the first buildings constructed outside the stockade of old Fort Benton. It was originally used as the first Blackfeet agency in 1863. Acting Governor Thomas Meagher, agent Gad Upson, and others negotiated an important treaty with Piegan chiefs Little Dog and Mountain Chief in the building in 1865. Later, it was a flop-on-the-floor hotel and saloon known as the Council House. In 1881, partners Sullivan and Goss set up their saddlery business in the building. Artist Charlie Russell was a frequent visitor. The rocking chair where he sat and told his endless yarns remains as if Russell were about to return. The entire Sullivan inventory remains intact in the shop. It still smells of horses and leather. This was the first building Charles Bovey “collected” and the beginning of his indoor exhibit in a huge barn at the Great Falls Fair Grounds called “Old Town.”  When asked to remove the “Old Town” exhibit in 1959, Bovey relocated his buildings to Nevada City, and that began the fabulous building collection you can visit today.

The Sullivan Saddlery building in 2012. Photo by Larry Myhre via Flickr

Sedman House

Montana legislator Charles Bovey placed some eighty endangered structures from across Montana at Nevada City. Now under state ownership, Nevada City is a good place for ghost hunting. The diverse pasts of its buildings raise myriad possibilities. The Sedman House is one of those special places where old energy seems to linger. Sometimes in the mornings when employees open the house for tourists, they find the bedding rumpled in an upstairs bedroom and furniture moved. Paranormal investigators and tourists have taken photographs in the house that include eerie images.  The house sits today at the west end of the main street but it was originally built at Junction City, a few miles away.


Photo by Ellen Baumler

It was the in-town residence of the Sedman family who ranched in the Ruby valley. Oscar Sedman was serving in the 1881 legislative session in Helena when he was fatally stricken with Rocky Mountain spotted fever. Sedman became the first legislator to die during a session. He left a wife and four children. In the next few years, a son and a daughter  died. Clara Sedman died of diphtheria; she was eight years old. Mrs. Sedman eventually remarried and moved to Missoula and the Sedman House became a boarding house. Later it fell vacant, home to chickens and other livestock. Charles Bovey rescued the house and moved it to Nevada City. In recent years, during living history demonstrations, tourists have commented that they really liked the living history at the various buildings throughout the town, especially the little girl in Victorian dress jumping rope on the porch of the Sedman House. But curiously, there is no living history presented at the Sedman House, and there is no little girl.

P.S. A few of my personal encounters with Virginia City ghosts

Nevada City Hotel

Spirits wander in the Nevada City Hotel. The 1860s front portion was a stage stop, its log walls disassembled and rebuilt where the original Nevada City Hotel once stood. A two-story employees’ dormitory, circa 1912, from the Canyon Hotel at Yellowstone Park form the hotel rooms. Guests have related odd incidents, but the most dramatic event happened in February 2001.  A Global Stage production crew filmed a scene of Henry Ibsen's Enemy of the People in the Nevada City Hotel’s saloon. The temperature dipped below zero in the unheated hotel. The guest rooms and corridors, upstairs and down, were locked. Fifty people—cast, crew, and local extras—crowded into the bar. State employee John Ellingsen remembers it well: “The director called ‘quiet on the set’ and the camera began to roll. Everyone held their breath, afraid to make a sound. Suddenly there were footsteps in the room above. ‘Cut! Who's up there?’ yelled the director. The crewmembers and I rushed upstairs. When I unlocked Room 7, the room over the bar, it was dark, cold, and empty. But the floor kept creaking, slowly and deliberately, during the entire filming. It was even captured on tape.” Several years ago on a Halloween haunted tour of the Nevada City Hotel, I led my group up the stairs of the old stage stop. We peeked in Room 7, and there was nothing out of the ordinary. Across the hall in Room 1 I turned the key in the lock. The door swung open. Two young boys behind me clutched at my jacket, and the adults gasped as we all heard the footsteps. They were coming from underneath the bed.


The second floor of the Nevada City Hotel



Sedman House

One of Montana’s best-kept secrets is the Sedman House, a beautifully furnished territorial period home in Nevada City, now under state ownership and maintained by the Montana Heritage Commission. It originally stood in nearby Junction City where it was one of the first large homes built in the region in 1873. Its builder, Madison County rancher and territorial legislator Oscar Sedman, met an unfortunate end. In 1881 during the legislative session in Helena, he suddenly took ill and died of “black measles,” the tick-born disease we know today as Rocky Mountain spotted fever. Sedman was the first Montana legislator to die during a session. He left a wife and four small children. His colleagues paid him tribute by draping his official chair in black crepe, turning it backwards to face the wall. After Oscar’s death, two of the Sedmans’ four children died. Mrs. Sedman remarried and moved to Missoula.

Sedman House, June 12, 2009
Photo by E.L. Malvaney via Flickr

The Sedmans’ lovely home later became the Junction Hotel. After that, it served as a stable. Charles Bovey disassembled the badly deteriorated building and moved it a mile and a half to Nevada City where he put it back together. The home today is a focal point. The period furnishings include the desk of vigilante prosecutor Wilbur Fisk Sanders and Colonel Charles Broadwater’s personal gold-trimmed bathtub from his private suite at the far-famed Broadwater Hotel. A visit to the Sedman House in Nevada City is well worth it.

From Montana Moments: History on the Go
P.S. This weekend would be an especially good opportunity to visit the Sedman House.

Wilbur Fisk Sanders

Over the course of more than a century, many illustrious men—and women—have served Montana as legislators. Our current lawmakers follow in some very big footsteps. One of the best known is Wilbur Fisk Sanders, whose long career as an attorney famed for his speechmaking began with a famous trial in Nevada City on a snowy December day in 1863.

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, 944-853

Sanders was the only man brave enough to prosecute George Ives, a suspected road agent accused of a brutal murder. Ives’s trial, conviction, and swift hanging on Nevada City’s main street served as catalyst to the forming of the famous vigilantes a few days later. Sanders’s first home in Virginia City and his second home—now the Sanders Bed and Breakfast in Helena—are important historical sites. Throughout his long career, Sanders was always outspoken and not easily intimidated. One winter day in Helena Episcopal Bishop Daniel Tuttle and Sanders met on a steep and icy street, and at that moment Sanders slipped and fell. The Bishop looked down on the prostrate man and observed, “The wicked stand in slippery places, Mr. Sanders.” Looking up, Sanders shot back, “I see they do Bishop, but damned if I see how they can.”

From Montana Moments: History on the Go